Some people never seem to learn that social media is this giant whirring cloud of razor blades that can flense a person’s political career in an instant. I mean, seriously: no politician who wants to run in a statewide race anywhere should ever be recorded with an unmistakable sneer in his/her voice when saying the word ‘Christianity.’ I don’t care what the context is, because neither will voters.

And no, life is not particularly fair.

Moe Lane

PS: Admittedly, I am punching down here. One reason why it’s not going up on the front page of RedState.

Bohlinger ended up losing; open question how much that was due to Harry Reid wanting a plagiarist in that Senate slot, but I’m guessing that it was at least a factor. It’d be funny if they had to go back to Bohlinger now. Also futile, but them’s the breaks. Do your oppo on your own people, too. Always do your oppo on your own people.

This would be Lt. Governor John Walsh, Democrat, potential candidate for Senator – and possibly the person that would have been picked to temporarily replace the possibly-quitting Max Baucus, although that might be up in the air now. The very short version: Walsh was running for a leadership position in the National Guard Association of the United States (NGAUS), and used his position as a colonel in the Montana NG to coerce his subordinates to join the group and improperly use resources to benefit the NGAUS.

I know, I know: sounds like something that would get investigated, and it was:

The report lists three different “substantiated allegation(s) and conclusion(s)”:

* Walsh improperly endorsed a non-federal entity (NGAUS);
* Walsh improperly used his government position for private gain;
* Walsh improperly used government resources.

But said investigation took place in 2010. Amazing what you can get up to when you have the right people running the federal government, eh?

Montana’s Attorney General Tim Fox has taken a stand against revealing the identities of concealed weapon permit holders.

[snip]

Montana’s AG Fox, a Republican, said he had received numerous requests recently, mainly from media, for the names and addresses of those legally authorized to carry concealed weapons in that vast Western state. The requests sought all available information on the permit holder, including date of birth, employer, Social Security and state driver’s license number.

In a legal memo, Fox came down on the side of denying all those requests, ruling “that the privacy of permit holders exceeds the public’s right to know.”

Basically, AG Fox noted that the media likes to take this information and turn it into projects that try to gun-shame people who own firearms. It doesn’t really work, of course; but then ‘working’ may not be the primary goal for advocates of the practice. ‘Lashing out’ is probably more accurate. Kudos to Fox for telling the Media to go take a hike…

Moe Lane

*Yeah, that description was picked with malice aforethought. Hopefully, I’ll either get some incredibly huffy responses, or some extremely tortured attempts to flip it back on me. Either will be good for a laugh.

Democratic leaders are wooing staunchly pro-gun candidates to run in pivotal Senate races at the same time they are discussing a strategy for bringing gun control legislation back up for debate.

The two candidates most mentioned in the Hill article above were former Governor Brian Schweitzer (for Montana) and former Representative Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (for South Dakota). Both are supposedly firm gun rights advocates; neither will survive being flipped on the topic (neither would Mark Begich of Alaska and Mark Pryor of Arkansas, both of whom sensibly voted against Joe Manchin’s* background check amendment). Of course, it’s an open question whether any of those four mentioned will survive even without being flipped on the topic, which is why the DSCC has zero intention of catering to fanatical gun-grabbers by allowing them to dictate ‘acceptable’ candidates. This, of course, was known: what was perhaps unexpected was the way that nobody’s particularly trying to hide this political calculus. (more…)

And this is pretty epic, too: between his warning of the upcoming Obamacare trainwreck (that Max Baucus helped crash in the first place, mind), and his display of the Hawaiian Good-Luck Symbol to gun-grabbers last week, old Max there isn’t retiring so much as he’s smacking the self-destruct button on his secret volcano lair on his way to the escape pad.

Max Baucus was on my list as being at Some Risk: turns out that what I thought was Baucus feeling invincible was just Baucus getting disgusted at his own party. Alas. Alack.

Via Hot Air comes this… I’m not sure what it is, besides pathetic. Anyway, Brian Schweitzer is apparently reveling in the curious freedom of being term-limited as the (Democratic) Governor of Montana; he decided to give The Daily Beast an earful, and I’m not entirely certain that Schweitzer has realized yet just how badly he stepped in it. Certainly badly enough that if he was hoping for a Senate gig in ’14, he should probably… stop hoping for that.

The Daily Beast contacted the office of Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer today to talk about whether his state would be in play in the 2012 presidential election. About a half hour later, the governor called back, and he had a lot to say. He didn’t think that Montana would be a swing state, but the Democrat did say that Mitt Romney could have issues nationally because his father was “born on a polygamy commune in Mexico.”

According to RCP, we’ve got primaries in California, Iowa, Maine, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Virginia. The news has been dominated by California’s, Nevada’s, and of course South Carolina’s – but they’re all important, so if you’re a voter in that state, hie yourselves and any reliable Republican voters within reach to a polling station. You can let the Democrats in your life sleep in, particularly in New Jersey and Virginia.

Also: KEEP YOUR VIDEO CAMERAS HANDY, PARTICULARLY IF YOU LIVE IN SOUTH CAROLINA. Anti-reform opponents of Nikki Haley and Bill Connor may be now past the point where their shenanigans can shape public opinion in time for the actual primary election, but there’s plenty of things that you can do to illicitly affect an election. Fortunately, sunlight is an excellent disinfectant – and, remember: as Mark Steyn notes here, Helen Thomas was taken down by a flipcam. There’s a reason that both Instapundit and I keep harping on this…

See also The Volokh Conspiracy. I should also point out that a competent Washington press corps might have deigned to notice the fact that Baucus treats ‘sleep with me’ as a job requirement earlier than just after his re-election. Oh, yes: there’s a history.